Roll over names of designated regions on the map
above for descriptions of the role of each in
the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The North American mainland played a relatively minor role in the trans-Atlantic
slave trade. Its ports sent out less than five percent of all known voyages, and its
slave markets absorbed less than four percent of all slaves carried off from Africa.
An intra-American trade in slaves – originating in the Caribbean - supplied additional
slaves, however. This region was exceptional in the Americas in that a positive rate
of natural population growth began relatively early, thus reducing the dependence
of the region on coerced migrants.

The Caribbean was one of the two major broad regional markets for slaves from
Africa. Over the two centuries when the trade was at its height, the major
locations for sugar production, and therefore the major slave markets, shifted
from the eastern Caribbean to the west. Here, first Jamaica, then St. Domingue,
and finally in the nineteenth century, Cuba, absorbed most of the slaves brought into
the region. As this implies, few islands developed self-sustaining populations
at any point in the slave trade era. Caribbean ports also sent out more slaving
expeditions to Africa than did the North American mainland ports.

Brazil was the center of the slave trade carried on under the Portuguese
flag, both before and after Brazilian independence in 1822, and Portugal was by
far the largest of the national carriers. Brazil dominated the slave trade in the
sense that Rio de Janeiro and Bahia sent out more slaving voyages than any port in
Europe, and certainly many times more than did Lisbon. Over nearly three centuries
between 1560 and 1850, Brazil was consistently the largest destination for slaves
in the Americas. Almost all the slaves coming into the region came from just two
coastal areas in Africa: the Bight of Benin and West-central Africa.

Europe was the starting point for about half of all trans-Atlantic slaving voyages.
This traffic dominated the West African to Caribbean section of the slave trade.
The major ports were at first located in the Iberian peninsula, but by the eighteenth
century northern European ports had become dominant. After 1807, France and the
Iberian ports sent out the great majority of European-based slaving voyages.
The European consumers’ demand for sugar was the driving force behind 350 years
of trans-Atlantic slave trading.

Sub-Saharan Africa lost over twelve and a half million people to the
trans-Atlantic slave trade alone between 1525 and 1867. Perhaps as many
again were carried off to slave markets across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean.
Over forty percent of captives left from West-central Africa alone with most of
the remainder leaving from the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and the Gold
Coast. About one in eight died on board the slave vessel and many others died
prior to departure and after arrival. Departures were channeled through a dozen
or so major embarkation points such as Whydah, Bonny, Loango, Luanda, and Benguela,
though many smaller ports also supplied slaves.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has
information on more than 35,000 slave voyages

that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the
Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers
researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the
reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

This database identifies 91,491 Africans taken from captured slave ships
or from African trading sites. It displays the
African name, age, gender, origin, country, and places of
embarkation and disembarkation of each individual.